So is Shadowlands good?

[Nak88]

After just 3 days of playing SL, I'm already burned out and back to Classic. Sthygia, anima, renown, soulbind, conduit, covenant, callings, the Maw, phantasma, Torgast, legendaries crafting, etc...It is just too many systems and endless grind, I really felt overwhelmed. Yes, the leveling experience was very good (although extremely fast) but the endgame is too grindy and confusing. I have not even experienced any dungeon, the raid or any pvp and I already feel done for Retail.

[Kel_Sceptic]

It was sarcasm. I thought the /s at the bottom would have been a dead giveaway.

Sorry man, missed that. It was 4am and it happend after 10-11 hours of playing

[Xentronium]

Everything about the game feels like it was designed to take as much time as possible. I'm starting to actively dislike the game as a result. Also there are just so many tuning problems and just straight up bugs that it maddens me.

Yeah, it feels like it was designed to meet Blizz dev's "player engagement" hours played KPI's rather than fun for players. I'm not a raider so I don't need to do the Maw for sockets or Torghast for the rank four legendary. There are no upgrades from world quests so that leaves one mythic plus for the week. Whoop-de-doo.

[ifrah]

After just 3 days of playing SL, I'm already burned out and back to Classic. Sthygia, anima, renown, soulbind, conduit, covenant, callings, the Maw, phantasma, Torgast, legendaries crafting, etc...It is just too many systems and endless grind, I really felt overwhelmed. Yes, the leveling experience was very good (although extremely fast) but the endgame is too grindy and confusing. I have not even experienced any dungeon, the raid or any pvp and I already feel done for Retail.

Not saying anyone wouldn't have the right and reasons to dislike SL, but this somewhat reminded me of my feelings of the game shortly after reaching 60. I just took a deep breath and started working on each of whatever I though was necessary at a slow pace. Pretty much everything can be done in small chunks at whatever pace you like. Confusion can be real unless you reach out to some external resources that lay out things for you. Endless grind? The name of the game since 2004.

[Mafic]

Systemlands can either be good or bad depending on two factors:

1. Patch frequency that actually addresses issues instead of just keep building on failed rental systems
2. See point 1.

BlizZard has said that all the rental systems this time around are front loaded and you will not see anymore with future patches. They better hold to that design ideal because an deviation of that would be a disaster.

[kamuimac]

Systemlands can either be good or bad depending on two factors:

1. Patch frequency that actually addresses issues instead of just keep building on failed rental systems
2. See point 1.

BlizZard has said that all the rental systems this time around are front loaded and you will not see anymore with future patches. They better hold to that design ideal because an deviation of that would be a disaster.

well they are flontloaded but this doesnt mean that renown wont rise to 100 in 9.1 and same like additional 4 ranks of legendary etc etc .

- - - Updated - - -

It wasn't about ilvl but it was about renown.

But for those that have problem with the "ilvl", they should backed what they are saying with their character armory link. Since until now, nobody linked their armory from those that talked about M+ and raid gear drop as a problem.

It only seemed like a subjective opinion of those who liked being rained upon with gear in BFA and don't know how raid gearing went for years and years.
Sure, I do get why people want badge/justice system, and it will most likely be a thing in the next patch.
But as people earlier said, the main drive of playing this should be for fun and for the challange.
If you play this game as a success replacement for your real life, it will suck and you will be frustrated to see that "35 anima" a couple of m+ runs.

for majority of players "fun" means obtaing gear.

it will be very well visible in next 2 weeks with 197 gear from anima and bgs - casuals will hardcap gear around 200-202 itlv and then they can :

1)quit till 9.1
2)do hc/mythic raids/mythic+10 and higher
3)do high rated arenas

2 out of 3 choices require you hardcore playing.

mmorpg cannot funtion if it doesnt allow constant strong income of gear to people who aprticipate in casual activities.

[Kel_Sceptic]

for majority of players "fun" means obtaing gear.

dunno if it's a majority, but that is sad. But if is "majority", then we will see BFA happening again.

Since, blizzard move on the opposite side of BFA, I must belive and assume they learned their lesson and checked their data and actually offered what what majority of people want. And that includes GEAR to actually matter, and that you actually remember "the item's" name. Just like Diablo 3 was at launch vs Diablo 3, 2 yearrs after launch. In diablo 3 launch we had the exact thing we had in BFA, shitloads of gear that you don't remember but just care for stats.

it will be very well visible in next 2 weeks with 197 gear from anima and bgs - casuals will hardcap gear around 200-202 itlv and then they can :

1)quit till 9.1
2)do hc/mythic raids/mythic+10 and higher
3)do high rated arenas

2 out of 3 choices require you hardcore playing.

mmorpg cannot funtion if it doesnt allow constant strong income of gear to people who aprticipate in casual activities.

Don't quite get it if you are actually playing this xpac or not, but from the way you talk, I tend to belive you don't play it.
If you play it, be kind and link us your armory, please.

[Mafic]

well they are flontloaded but this doesnt mean that renown wont rise to 100 in 9.1 and same like additional 4 ranks of legendary etc etc .

Well if they do what you state above and add more rental system chores then it becomes problematic. Time will tell if they resist the urge to ramp up the chores needed for this expansion.

[Lei]

well they are flontloaded but this doesnt mean that renown wont rise to 100 in 9.1 and same like additional 4 ranks of legendary etc etc .

- - - Updated - - -



for majority of players "fun" means obtaing gear.

it will be very well visible in next 2 weeks with 197 gear from anima and bgs - casuals will hardcap gear around 200-202 itlv and then they can :

1)quit till 9.1
2)do hc/mythic raids/mythic+10 and higher
3)do high rated arenas

2 out of 3 choices require you hardcore playing.

mmorpg cannot funtion if it doesnt allow constant strong income of gear to people who aprticipate in casual activities.

It's not just gear and/or completely fucking up the reward structure tbh. Anima starvation is huge issue atm. You need 10k and 22k anima and you get 35 and 70 from most wqs. That's borderline offensive tbh. Especially on alts. I have a night fae main and I really fell in love with the abomination stitching on my alt (or at least till rank 2 it's great fun to me), but just to think about how I'm gonna get 10k anima and then 22k? Pfff. There are days when I only get 200-300, of course there are days when we have 250 anima wqs up and a couple 105-140 ones. I'm simply skipping the 70-35 ones out of some self respect, especially when the same wq sometimes gives 105 anima then 70. WTF?
Something really needs to happen with anima supply or people are going to run out of every and any activities in the game as everything costs and requires anima. Chosing between: do I upgrade my covenant gear (so I make my own life easier while I farm more anima) OR buy petsmountsxmogs (for some actual reward feeling) OR expand my sanctum buildings (so I can have more fun) is not very nice.

[AidanJLowe]

My thoughts. I was invited during late beta so experienced pretty much everything it had to offer prior to launch, decided to not play it however about 3-4 days after launch bought it at a base level edition.

Managed to get 4 level 60s & cleared M0s before raid/M+ and I genuinely had a blast during this time.

I feel they've built the foundation of a decent expansion but that all depends on how they progress the systems further & patches, I have stopped playing as of writing this because I'm simply doing the same things everyday, logging in spending half an hour in Oribos looking for M+ grps in order to get 3 x chances at decent loot at the reset. For a few weeks this was fine but only 8 dungeons at launch is starting to wear thin now, I sure hope more are on the cards, only problem with that is where would covenant specific buffs fit in with any new dungeon as currently its even, 2-2-2-2.

I have to say I got bored of Torghast during beta so didn't hold out hope for live and I was right, out of necessity for Soul Ash you have to do it to a point until you get the desired 235 lego which is BiS for your spec and obviously TC is optional but it's a feature that without constant iteration it's going to suffer.

Soulbinds and Legendaries are our borrowed power for this expansion and tbh it's far better than HoA / Azerite so that is a plus this expansion for sure and I enjoy them.

The Maw needs major work imo, I looked at the rewards for the rep and unless your a high pushing M+ / Mythic raider for sockets you really don't need to do it outside of your x amount of souls per week.

What I loved about 1-2-3-4-5, World of Warcraft and the 4 expansions after was it's simplistic storytelling, now we went back in time, we had Sargeras stab the planet now we got to the realms of death and I while I understand they need to progress the lore and story it has the same feeling of Game of Thrones, the first seasons are far better than the last few, spectacle does not make something good and I feel that's where WoW lore is at now.

It's an ok expansion and it'll be good depending on how they progress from here, for me I can't do what you guys do and do the same content all the time, for a few expansions now I dip in and out when patches hit and then do something else.

[Kel_Sceptic]

It's not just gear and/or completely fucking up the reward structure tbh. Anima starvation is huge issue atm. You need 10k and 22k anima and you get 35 and 70 from most wqs. That's borderline offensive tbh. Especially on alts. I have a night fae main and I really fell in love with the abomination stitching on my alt (or at least till rank 2 it's great fun to me), but just to think about how I'm gonna get 10k anima and then 22k? Pfff. There are days when I only get 200-300, of course there are days when we have 250 anima wqs up and a couple 105-140 ones. I'm simply skipping the 70-35 ones out of some self respect, especially when the same wq sometimes gives 105 anima then 70. WTF?
Something really needs to happen with anima supply or people are going to run out of every and any activities in the game as everything costs and requires anima. Chosing between: do I upgrade my covenant gear (so I make my own life easier while I farm more anima) OR buy petsmountsxmogs (for some actual reward feeling) OR expand my sanctum buildings (so I can have more fun) is not very nice.

The game is gated in a way so if you have enough SOULS, you will prob have enough anima to make that building. But I don;t have enough souls on my main, that I log every day since launch, so why would you expect yo have 10k anima on an alt, as soon as you ding ?

On my alt, dinged on 10.01, I've spent my anima on 2x tier 1 (transport + command table) and the rest of the anima went to upgrading covenant gear.
I could have build 1 tier 2, I have only 8 souls remaining. But that's just the game, you make decisions if you wanna gear an alt faster or have a tier 2 covenant building.

I mean, renown 19 + ilvl 179 + Torghast 1x L8 + 1x L7 cleared + Legendary + the fact I haven't done any dungeons, except the one I was forced to do from the covenant quest line .. I'd say it is not to bad for an alt that dinged 2 days ago.

You problem with anima just seems you want it all NOW.

[MiiiMiii]

I am kind of over it for a while.

It's really generic the 3 weekly levels with your Covenant gates.
I absolutly hate doing Torghast, it's not challenging, it's not fun, it's just a waste of time. And don't get me started if I get unlucky and can't beat final boss cuz it's some blob that split into 20 clones.
M+ is still elitist and annoying.

PvP gearing is OK but the Honor gear is really low ilvl and the Conquest Cap increases every week so I can just catch up to the cap whenever, it's no advantage to cap current week. I wish the conquest gear upgrading was not so gated behind Arena/RBG ratings.

Maybe I will get inspired in the future, but for now I am mostly playing other games and if I am in WoW mood, I level my Druid in Classic.

[Imphrazel]

From my personal point of view, Shadowlands is good in most ways, but is also bad in some parts.

The overall aesthetics in design is cool, as allways. You´ve got a ton of diferent activities to do, espacially when you play 4 chars to play each covenant story.

On the other hand, the endgame doesn´t feel rewarding (espacially M+) and it takes a way to long / to much effort to gear up for +15s / mythic raid.
Don´t understand me wrong. It was a good decision to cut off WF/TF and all these shit. But the ilvl, and the number of items, of M+ end of run chest is a little bit to low for the effort, comparet to PvP or even to the covenant Story Set. (which you get with anyway when you want to do the Story)

In my opinion there should be some kind of curancy (Valor Points ) at the end of an M+ run, from a Raidboss AND as an alternativ choice in the great vault.
But I don´t think Blizzard will do this, even so many people statet this is the System they want.

[kodemonkee]

I wonder who thought at the HQ that Torghast will be fun/a good idea for a whole expansion as the only source for big Ash amount.

[Sofo1]

I love it ! there are plenty of stuff to do!

[Flurryfang]

Lets see when X.2 comes out.

Some expansions before had great starts bad yet bad patches.

SL has a good start, but it is already starting to lose its glimmer. The raid came out so early, that it is losing its flair quite quickly. I fear for what the player experience will be in a month.

We really need to see more of SL to judge it. The systems are young and too unexplored to really hold an expansion. Something that is good now, might be what tanks the entire expansion in 3-6 months.

[crusadernero]

Its decent enough. Gearing feels very slow, but I dont mind. I have 4 alts in each of the covenants, so I can swap between them and see the campaign and all that.

I havent done alot of Night Fae story and nothing of Venthyr yet, plan is to check that out. Done all on my Pala(Kyrian) & DK(maldraxxus) and thats been fairly enjoyable.

With that said - Im feeling a bit bored of it. My feeling is that I wont be THAT bothered with gearing any character and I know 100% I wont level more characters than the 4 I already have at max level, cause I cant be bothered going through all the mundane shite again(like Torghast).

BTW - Torghast is quite boring overall. It takes to long without anything special happening and when I reach the end I might not even manage to take down the boss due to anima power RNG. It feels very weird snoring through everything up until last boss were you get owned.

Right now it feels that the next patch will be vital to keep people playing. Cool new content to play with and decent catch up systems. They also need to do something about Torghast, cause that place is so bad. Cant believe it was hyped up before launch, I see no reason to it.

[Lei]

The game is gated in a way so if you have enough SOULS, you will prob have enough anima to make that building. But I don;t have enough souls on my main, that I log every day since launch, so why would you expect yo have 10k anima on an alt, as soon as you ding ?

On my alt, dinged on 10.01, I've spent my anima on 2x tier 1 (transport + command table) and the rest of the anima went to upgrading covenant gear.
I could have build 1 tier 2, I have only 8 souls remaining. But that's just the game, you make decisions if you wanna gear an alt faster or have a tier 2 covenant building.

I mean, renown 19 + ilvl 179 + Torghast 1x L8 + 1x L7 cleared + Legendary + the fact I haven't done any dungeons, except the one I was forced to do from the covenant quest line .. I'd say it is not to bad for an alt that dinged 2 days ago.

You problem with anima just seems you want it all NOW.

Who said I want 10k anima on my alt as soon as he dings? Needing to balance/make a decision between covenant gear upgrades so you can farm more anima easier or being able to build something IS my problem. The fact that you have to make the decision doesn't make it right or carefully designed. I think it is a siht design.
10k anima for my alt will take around 4 weeks, give or take. In 4 weeks I will have 60(? we get more weekly at renown 24 so probably more) souls. Like I said I dont farm 35-70 anima wqs on main, let alone alts. And I'm not gearing up alts in group content, and they won't be running torghast for anything. They are solely for the purpose of enjoying other covenant features, collect their xmogs pets mount etc.

[Kolvarg]

The game is gated in a way so if you have enough SOULS, you will prob have enough anima to make that building. You problem with anima just seems you want it all NOW.

Well, my experience has been that there is definitely an anima shortage issue, and it's so bad that it just made me not care about it anymore, rather than motivate me to grind it.

I've been playing almost exclusively my main, on a nearly daily basis. I run 4 to 10 M+ every week, raid HC 2 nights a week, run at least 2 Torghast each week, do the Maw weeklies and some maw dailies, do most of the callings, and occasionally do skirmishes, rated arenas, and random battlegrounds. I have each of the covenant upgrades on level 1, and a single one on level 2 (and only because of the anima boost from killing Denathrius). I'm currently probably around 1k anima only.

I can't be arsed to go do more world quests than the callings require, not when I'm already doing all that other stuff, and especially not for ridiculous amounts of anima - even the ones that reward 250, that's just 5% of an upgrade to level 2.


Maybe it's super rewarding for people who really like world quests or something, but for me, I just don't care about the system anymore, and I won't even look at it in any alt I play.

I'm liking this expansion overall, but the anima system, the legendary crafting system, the main story and covenant campaign being unreasonably milked over so many weeks, and the way the maw is time-gated have been fairly disappointing for me.

[Osmeric]

I'm feeling more and more confirmed about my decision to bail out early.

I think many of those of you sticking it out are not going to end up very happy.